January 2023 was the mildest on record and had just a trace of snow (on three days); the two seem to go hand in hand. That said, I was curious about mild winter months with appreciable snowfall and cold winter months with relatively little. Call it an analysis of counter-intuitives.
Nearly 40% of months that are among the 10 mildest between December and March have had no snow or just a trace. But of the mildest months to report snow, the snowiest was February 2017 (ranked as the second mildest February) which had 9.4" of snow. This amount fell on one day, 2/9, and came after a high temperature of 62° the day before. The second most snowfall was in Feb. 1991 with 9.1". 8.9" of that amount was from a storm near the end of the month.
On average, a top-10 coldest month in the winter (December thru March) averages 12 inches of snow. The least snowy of these coldest months was December 1989 (ranked third coldest December) which reported just 1.4" of snow that fell during three non-consecutive days (0.1" on 12/13, 0.7" on 12/15 and 0.6" on 12/30).
FYI, the snowiest month among the 10 coldest of each winter month is March 1896 which had 30.5". Much of the snow fell from two storms, one of 11 inches and another of 10 inches.
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